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The Little Red Hen
The Little Red Hen is an old Russian folk tale that offers a moral of the importance of hard work and the shame as well as consequences of laziness. About it The little red hen finds a grain of wheat and has an idea to plant it, so she goes to look for a nice bit of earth, scratches it with her feet, and plants the grain of wheat.Then the hen carries a bucket of water in her wing to the field and waters it. When the seed grows, the hen cuts the wheat all by herself. The hen brings the wheat to the mill all by herself, grinds the wheat into flour, and carries the heavy sack of flour back to the farm. The tired hen goes into her kitchen, and mixes the flour into dough, kneads the dough, and puts it into the oven to bake all by herself. When the bread is finished, the hen opens the oven door, and sees that the dough has risen up and turned into a nice and delicious looking loaf of bread, as a lovely smell of hot fresh bread fills all the corners of the house and wafts out into the garden. The hen completes her task and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all of the other farmyard animals eagerly volunteer, however, she declines their help by stating that they did not aid her in the preparation work, since she got no assistance from them because none of them volunteered when she asked for help. As a result, her friends all stand and watch as the hen eats the loaf all by herself without leaving some for anyone else, right down to the very last crumb. The gallery of pictures The little red hen.png Trivia The various adaptations have featured a pig, frog, rat, dog, cat, duck, rooster, baby chick, and billy goat There is an alternate nicer and happy ending version of story, where the animals come sheepishly to ask to eat the baked bread, as they recognize their earlier wrongdoings in refusing to help and so they bring offerings of honey, cream, and jam to the table to share, as a result of this, the hen accepts their apology and their gifts, and they eat the feast together. This version could be considered the definitive version of the story for those who like a happy and collaborative ending since forgiveness is important and might be uncomfortable with the moral at the end of the story where you don’t contribute to an effort and do not get to reap the rewards, since the self-righteousness of the hen hoards the bread while the other animals look on, which really isn't spectacular behavior for kids or their parents to emulate. There is also another version where a farmer claims that the hen is being unfair and selfish if she does not share her bread with the other animals, and is forced to reluctantly share her bread with those who would not work for it, as the other previously non-participant animals deserve to enjoy the product too, despite their failure to help by saying no to the contribution to the product. However, this results in removing the hen's incentive to work resulting in poverty for the entire barnyard.